Homeless mother and five children may have to sleep in car

If your vision of homelessness is someone sleeping in a doorway in a tattered sleeping bag on a bed of cardboard or old newspapers, think again.

Roseanne Cleary does not fit the traditional ‘homeless’ image. The divorced mother of five is an articulate young woman who could possibly, in different circumstances, be running her own business.

Roseanne never imagined she would be homeless. She was aware of the homeless problem but not in a million years did she think she would be one of the homeless statistics. On Wednesday night, Roseanne and her children were packing their bags and leaving their emergency accommodation in the Maldron Hotel in Oranmore, paid for by COPE, with no idea where she would be spending the following night.

And by the time people are reading this article, Roseanne could well be sleeping in her car, her only asset. A few months ago the owners of her rented house in Castlelawn Heights informed her they would be putting the house up for sale. She had a very good relationship with them so they gave her until February 1 to find alternative accommodation. But this was a much harder task than she had envisaged.

“I had been living in Castlelawn for four years and I got on very well with my landlords. They were very good to me and gave me good references, so I thought my urgent housing need would be prioritised.

“But I feel Galway County Council is paying me no heed whatsoever so I’ve had to resort to begging TDs and even Minister for Housing Simon Coveney last week for a house,” she says.

In the past few days, her five weeks of homelessness has become more desperate as temporary crisis accommodation comes to an end, such is the demand on the services of COPE.

For more on this story, see this week’s Galway City Tribune.